Perfectionism is highly prized in the current fake world of social media, creating much added mental anguish for those of us who are highly self-critical.
Separating ourselves from what our culture finds to be attractive, sexy, and successful is difficult because we often tend to fall short in our own eyes.
Dr. Gerald Stein (Blogging About Psychotherapy from Chicago) has written a very helpful list of 30 ways we can become our own best friend!
I found myself smiling and nodding in agreement to many of the items on the list, happy with myself that I’d already embraced those items.
Be kind to who you are. Your life emerged without a display case from which to choose the attributes you wanted. You began with raw and imperfect materials of external creation. Improve them as you can, but don’t diminish what you have accomplished. In the words of Epictetus, “…as the (working) material of the carpenter is wood, and that of (a sculptor is) bronze, so the subject matter of the art of living is each person’s own life.“
Dr. Gerald Stein (Blogging About Psychotherapy from Chicago)
Some of the points I smiled at, knowing I was actively working on them, were very hard-won to learn.
I struggled immensely with the above quote for years, having been negatively trained into being very critical of myself. In my twenties I was an anorexic, punishing myself and trying to somehow take control of a very difficult life, not realizing then that the healthy antidote to all the toxicity was to learn to be kind to myself!
A few other points on the list had me wanting to skip over them, and then I realized they made me feel a little uncomfortable within myself simply because I wasn’t focusing enough energy into those areas!
When hardship comes, remember how you survived earlier losses and what properties within you enabled you to bounce back.
Dr. Gerald Stein (Blogging About Psychotherapy from Chicago)
When hardships or setbacks come into my life, my mind still wants to throw itself into a panic attack, fear wants to grip my mind and permeate my body.
As soon as I recognize I’m feeling those still instinctive reactions, I mindfully move myself into the kindness mode above, for that’s what allows me to feel calmer and to let the fear ease away from me.
When I recognize that I’m feeling old reactions, my new tool is to purposefully suspend judgment of myself, because previously I would be very hard on myself for NOT being able to be positive or kind to myself!
Remember this: we’re ALL a work in progress!
Don’t try to compare yourself to how others project themselves, for their reality may only be a facade and not the actual truth of how they’re doing!
Only compare yourself with who you were before! That is the only benchmark you know to be true and accurate!
Above all, keep learning, keep practicing!
Learn, always learn. You will relearn the same lessons under new conditions with different solutions many times in any life. If you stay unchanged, you will be like a man watching history race by, missing the chance to be enlarged by time, thought, and experience.
DR. GERALD STEIN (BLOGGING ABOUT PSYCHOTHERAPY FROM CHICAGO)
The more we practice, the better we become! Life will throw us many curveballs, giving us ample opportunity to practice what we learn in all sorts of circumstances! (Kind of how a trainer at the gym puts you through your paces to help you get stronger!)
We aren’t failures if our subconscious minds keep reacting in old ways! Those old reactions can be so deeply rooted that it takes years of redirecting our minds to make the changes we want to.
When we recognize an old reaction, we will now have new tools to keep basting into our old wounds, so are able to navigate life differently than we did before!
I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts!
I’m sharing more posts that may be helpful for you:
- 10 Steps to Owning Our Happiness
- Setting “Boundaries with consequences”
- Making a change… “How do I take that first step?”
- Affirmation: Today is a new day! I can do this!
- As we practice being gentle and kind with ourselves, we actually help to speed the process of helping our lives become more positive!
- Always believe that wonderful things can happen!
- A healthy outside starts from the inside!
- Brain Rewiring
More good stuff:
Teaching ourselves to like, even to love ourselves
By changing our inner dialogue, we change EVERYTHING!
Red Ocean or Blue Ocean? How do you think?
An answer to dealing with the Inner Critic!
My top 10 most viewed posts, plus a few bonuses!
A helpful trick to be able to overcome negatively Comparing Ourselves to others…
Do you only accept yourself if you look a certain way?
Start today, start tomorrow, just start!
There is no enlightenment outside of daily life – Thich Nhat Hanh
Please go to my Archived Posts page to find more wonderful posts to check out!
Blessings!
Thank you for sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara
https://tamarakulish.com/ Archived Posts: https://tamarakulish.com/archived-posts/
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Tamara Kulish 
Absolutely loved the message of this post. We are so used to seeing perfection on our screens that we forget that no one is perfect. We all have our flaws and we all have things we are working on and that’s okay. It’s okay to be imperfect.
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Thanks so much! We need to hear these messages! Our mental health needs to be reminded!!
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Another valuable post Tamara – perfectionism and procrastination take up so much life energy away from the flow and alignment available. I love your message og nudging ourselves towards kindness and self compassion continually, slowly and steadily.
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Thank you so much! Yes, this bears repeating doesn’t it?! I appreciate your wonderful insights, as always!
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You are very welcome 🙂 Yes.
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